As such experts as U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci caution that a return to a pre-pandemic "normal" remains more than a year out, travel industry leaders are making progress on programs to jumpstart business travel in the interim.
Even as Covid-19 spread in recent weeks has been worsening in many corners of the globe, airlines have received encouraging news from various studies indicating a relatively low rate of Covid-19 transmission aboard aircraft with proper safety and sanitization procedures in place. As such, they see the disparate border restrictions and quarantine requirements around the world as the biggest obstacle to demand recovery.
"In terms of returning to something that even looks remotely like a pre-pandemic travel level, we're going to need to have, in the short and medium term, a rapid-testing strategy that balances the public health considerations [and] economic recovery," JetBlue president Joanna Geraghty said in a recent earnings call. "[That] allows countries and states to reopen or relax and eliminate what we see is largely ineffective quarantines and other travel restrictions."
Making the Case for Testing
Rapid testing is becoming more readily available, but airlines also are finding a challenge in persuading some jurisdictions that testing is an acceptable alternative to quarantine. Emirates president Tim Clark, speaking at a recent CAPA Centre for Aviation virtual conference, said the carrier had put pre-flight testing in place early on in the pandemic with those hopes in mind.
"It was a bit of a shot in the dark, but we believed at the time it was a meaningful way forward," Clark said. "We were unable to persuade the U.K. government or Europeans that this was a smart way of going about it."
In the United States, Hawaii is one of the most high-profile destinations to allow travelers to skip quarantine with a negative test from approved providers, and several airlines began pre-flight Covid testing for Hawaii service in mid-October. Those carriers say they already are seeing positive effects on demand. Alaska Airlines EVP and chief commercial officer Andrew Harrison said in the carrier's third-quarter earnings callthat demand to Hawaii has begun to recover and capacity to Hawaii will be up significantly in the fourth quarter compared with the third. United Airlines reported that passengers from San Francisco to Hawaii nearly doubled over the first 10 days the testing was available.
American Airlines also is working on similar programs for travel to Jamaica and is exploring further Caribbean expansion.
American Express Global Business Travel chief commercial officer Drew Crawley said that testing is ultimately more effective than quarantine in slowing Covid-19 spread. With the exception of areas that are strictly enforcing quarantines, such as placing arrivals in hotels with armed guards, quarantine is mostly "a human activity that relies on people complying," he said. Testing, meanwhile, provides a high probability that all arrivals are virus-free.
"Tests are not 100 percent accurate; we know that," Crawley said. "You cannot mitigate risk to zero. But you can get comfortable with the level of risk."
Building the Bubble
In terms of a business travel focus, creating a "bubble" between New York and London is one of the key priorities for the industry, as it would allow travelers who undergo testing pre-flight and upon arrival to bypass quarantine restrictions in both cities. Industry leaders working to make that a reality hope to have it in place by the end of the year, and so far, "the U.S. side is moving at a faster pace than the U.K.," said Crawley, who has been involved in the discussions.
The U.K. government's travel task force is expected to deliver a report at the beginning of November, but right now, some expect the task force to recommend allowing a shorter quarantine for passengers who are tested rather than eliminate it altogether, which Crawley said "won't make any difference—a quarantine is a quarantine."
New York-London has been the focus "because there a lots of airlines who fly it, it's highly profitable for those airlines, and the trade at both ends is stunning," Crawley said. "In addition, there is enough demand in London and New York without needing lots of feeder services to fill the airplanes."
United next month will begin free testing of all passengers older than two years old on select flights from Newark. Tested passengers still will be subject to quarantine requirements in the United Kingdom, but the carrier hopes the data will help make the case for eventually allowing an exemption.
In the meantime, other European Union countries are further ahead than the United Kingdom in terms of enabling testing to replace quarantine restrictions, including Italy, France and Germany, Crawley said.
In Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore also are working on setting up their own travel bubble that they expect to be up and running in November. In addition, Japan is looking at exemptions for business travelers who will be staying in the country for 72 hours or less.
Managing the Data
Another major step toward the eventual elimination or easing of border restrictions and quarantine requirements occurred earlier this month with the first transatlantic trial of CommonPass, a digital health pass app, on a United flight from London to Newark. Earlier in October, CommonPass also was tested on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Singapore.
With CommonPass, travelers are tested before travel, and the results are uploaded into the app as a QR code, which border officials can scan upon arrival.
Having that common platform gives those officials a better way to review results than paper from laboratories, which could be in a language with which they are unfamiliar or even forged.
"We believe the CommonPass framework allows governments to implement much more nuanced policies, if they can count on laboratory results and vaccination records from other countries," Brad Perkins, cofounder and chief medical officer of the Commons Project Foundation, said in a call to media after the Newark test. "They can avoid closing the border or having mandatory quarantines in place for all arrivals."
In addition, the platform provides an extra level of data security, Commons Project Foundation CEO Paul Meyer said, as they do not have to hand over testing paperwork to airline or border officials.
"It verifies that a traveler has been tested, but it's not stored or conveyed to an airline or government," Meyer said. "It complies with [General Data Protection Regulation] and the other data privacy requirements."
CommonPass in the next two months will roll out to other locations with broader deployment planned for 2021, Meyer said. Even after vaccines become widely available, the platform will continue to be of use for travelers to show their vaccination status. It has uses outside of Covid as well, such as showing proof of yellow fever vaccinations for those destinations that require it.
"Countries will decided to integrate vaccines at different periods, so this will become important for crossing borders," Perkins said.